


The Obligatory Coffee Shop AU (Because Every Fandom Has One)

by flashforeward



Series: Trusted Associates Coffee [1]
Category: Eerie Indiana
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Gen, Mega Voodoo Eerie Weirdness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-22
Updated: 2020-03-22
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:02:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23262148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flashforeward/pseuds/flashforeward
Summary: Simon Holmes has lived a relatively normal life in Eerie, Indiana - as normal a life as you can live in Eerie - and now runs a coffee shop, Trusted Associates, which he owns with his childhood best friend Marshall. One day a new customer turns their lives upside down and Simon’s the only one who seems to realize exactly what’s going on.
Series: Trusted Associates Coffee [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1678867
Comments: 4
Kudos: 9
Collections: Fandom For Australia





	The Obligatory Coffee Shop AU (Because Every Fandom Has One)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Deifire](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deifire/gifts).



> Written for Deifire for the Fandom for Oz auction. I accepted a challenge to write a Coffee Shop AU that D would like. Hopefully I succeeded! Sparky the hell-hound was created by Froodle.

Simon kept an eye on the girl at the corner booth as he cleaned a table across the shop. She’d been there for hours now, typing away on an old manual typewriter, stack of finished pages growing beside her. Simon glanced at Sparky, who was lounging by the door, all three heads dozing, drool dripping from the middle head. Maybe keeping your hell-hound in your shop wasn’t compliant with health codes, but at least he’d know early if the girl was a threat. She was young, fourteen or fifteen, and was still nursing her first cup of hot chocolate. Simon wasn’t concerned about her paying – if she could she would and if she couldn’t Simon could take the loss. It was more the strangeness of her presence. She’d been his only customer since the morning rush ended at around 8:30, just sitting by the windows, sipping her cocoa, and watching the empty street out front.

Simon couldn’t even say for sure when she’d come in. Their part-timer Tod was off sick, so it had just been Simon handling the register and making the drinks. Luckily his customers understood, but it had been a harried and difficult ninety minutes (another issue helped by the legally dubious hell-hound: those who found him terrifying were kept in line, those who found him adorable were distracted) and there was no way to be sure when the girl had come in and set up her little writing nook.

In and of itself, none of this was particularly weird. What was weird was the fact that Simon had never seen this girl before. He’d lived in Eerie his entire life and had been running the coffee shop for much of his adulthood, yet this girl had never once crossed his path. Trusted Associates wasn’t a touristy place and Simon could count the number of sightseers he’d served over the years on one hand. Besides, tourists were easy to spot. They were always asking questions or taking pictures or asking for directions.

This girl, on the other hand, seemed content to go unnoticed.

Simon moved on to another table, scrubbing away the coffee drips and brushing the crumbs to the floor for Hal, the shop’s hard working Roomba, to scoop up on its way past. He wanted to walk past his customer, maybe see if he could catch a glimpse of what she was writing, but he more than anyone understood how precious the privacy of public spaces could be. He might not know her situation, but the memory of his own was enough to keep him from pushing his nosiness too far.

The bell over the door gave a soft tinkling sound and Sparky lurched to his feet with a low growl from his middle head, but it was quickly drowned out by the two other heads yipping excitedly as Simon's business partner, Marshall Teller, came through the door with a bag full of dog biscuits.

"Stop spoiling him," Simon said, but he didn't actually try to stop Marshall giving a big milkbone to each head. With three slobbery licks at Marshall's palm, Sparky meandered off to enjoy his treats.

"How was the morning?" Marshall asked, hanging his coat on the coat tree by the door and walking around behind the counter. 

Simon gave the girl in the corner one last glance before following Marshall back into the kitchen where trays of cooling baked goods waited to be stocked. He'd ask what Marshall thought later, though he was surprised his friend hadn't commented on her presence yet.

"Tod called in," he said, loading the boxes as Marshall folded them. "He had a run in with an apparition and got ectoplasmed."

"Again?" Marshall shook his head. "We'll have to have him call Marisea if this keeps happening."

"He has her card but I don't think his land lord cares enough." Simon took the first stack of filled boxes out to the display case and returned to fill more. "I think I'll pick up the expense. I don't want to have another rush without him here."

Marshall nodded and began folding the next size boxes, the ones they used for the bigger pastries. "Reasonable. You should have called me, you know I'm always willing to come in early."

Simon shrugged. "You closed last night, you needed your sleep."

When they'd first opened, they'd traded off opening and closing shifts, but it was clear early on that Simon was better suited to morning shifts and Marshall to evening. They didn't stay open particularly late, but they did open quite early and that wasn't including the morning baking that had to be done. Simon wasn’t just better at being awake earlier, he also liked it. There was a lot from his childhood he might one day have to examine to understand why, but he wasn’t there just yet.

Simon took the next batch of boxes out front, then he and Marshall started to stock the display cases for anyone who didn’t want the pre-made assortments. Sparky was lying in front of the counter now, one head watching the sweets, one dozing, and one watching the girl in the corner, who was no longer typing away. She was holding her hot chocolate in front of her mouth, sipping at it slowly and watching the empty street outside.

Except.

It wasn’t empty anymore. Simon stopped, staring out the glass front of the door and watching as another unfamiliar figure walked briskly towards the shop. They wore all black, their hands in their pockets and their shoulders hunched, the only break in the monochrome a shock of gray hair.

“You all right, Simon?” Marshall asked just as the door swung open with the tinkling of the bell. In a moment, Marshall shifted to customer service mode, moving to the register and smiling at their new customer. “Welcome to Trusted Associates, what can I get you?”

Inside, with their face no longer hidden by the high collar of their coat, Simon saw that the customer presented masculine. He knew better than to assume anything, but the scowl on the person’s face made him disinclined to ask after pronouns. 

The customer lifted his head and stared at Marshall for a moment, then looked up at the menu – painstakingly drawn and detailed by their friend Sara Sue – then looked back down to Marshall and twisted his lips into a sneer. “Got any normal coffee?” he asked in a low, gravelly voice.

Simon could see Marshal bristle at that – they didn’t get that question very often and usually it was from the kind of people who asked that at every coffee place they went to, thinking they were so clever – but Mars quickly covered it up and plastered on his can’t wait for you to leave smile, gesturing up at the menu hanging behind him as he answered. “We have our standard dark roast and our weekly special blend is a chocolate caramel that comes with three seals of approval from Sparky.”

The customer’s brow furrowed. “What’s a Sparky?” At his feet, Sparky’s middle head gave a low growl and the customer jumped back. “What the hell is that?”

“A hell-hound,” Simon said, bending down to shush his pet. “He’s mostly harmless, as long as you’re not an escaped soul.” He looked up, meeting the customer’s gaze. “You’re not, are you? We’re obligated to send you back if you are.”

“So it’s the whole town, then?” the customer asked.

“What is?” Simon stood, sliding over slightly so he was in front of Sparky in case the hell-hound got any ideas.

“This. The. Weirdness.”

Simon shrugged. “I guess,” he said. He was never sure how to respond to people who thought Eerie was weird. It was just...Eerie. He was used to it, it was home.

It occurred to him, as he felt Sparky resettle behind him, that the girl by the window hadn’t asked anything.

“Do you know what you’d like?” Marshall asked, doing nothing to hide the impatience and annoyance in his voice. “Or are you just loitering?”

The customer glared at Marshall, but growled out an order for the dark roast. He paid, took his cup, and stomped off to an out of the way table and sat down, clutching the coffee close to his chest as though trying to absorb the warmth.

“Simon?” Marshall asked and Simon jumped, realizing he’d been staring. He turned and leaned his elbows on the counter. He met Marshall’s gaze and gave him an encouraging smile, ignoring the way his friend’s brow furrowed, not completely convinced even as he returned to work. Once he was in the back, Simon pushed away from the counter and, with one last glance back at the gray haired man, strode across the shop to the girl with the typewriter.

She didn’t look up, just kept typing away as he stood by her, trying to decide how to proceed. He shouldn’t have come over until he had a plan, but his curiosity got the better of him and now he had to think on the fly, which wasn’t his strong suit. That was Melanie’s department, and she didn’t work weekdays.

He opened his mouth, fully intending to ask who she was, what she was doing here, how she’d known the gray haired man was coming – because he was certain she’d known – but all that came out was, “Would you like anything else?”

She finally looked up at him, eyes crinkling at the corners as she smiled. “No thanks, I’m fine,” she said, and Simon walked back over to the counter. Sparky kept an eye on the gray haired man with his left head, his middle head continued to doze, and his right head tracked Simon, giving out a yip of expectation as he neared. Simon chuckled and bent down to scratch the right head behind the ears. “You’re a good boy,” he said.

“This fucking town,” the gray haired man grumbled loudly.

Simon stood again and walked over to his table. “Can I help you?” he asked, polite but stern.

The man glared up at him. “I’m just saying. This place is messed up.”

Simon studied him for a moment. “Why, where are you from?”

The man’s eyes flicked away, down to the mug cupped in his hands. Simon followed his gaze and blinked, staring at the man’s right hand where a black line like a minus sign stood out stark against the man’s pale skin. “Doesn’t matter,” the man grumbled, then sipped at his coffee and turned to look out the window, ending the conversation.

Simon returned to the counter where Marshall was finishing up adding the pastries to the display. 

“So what’s his story?” Marshall asked.

“No idea,” Simon said with a shrug. He rounded the counter and went back into the kitchen to start cleaning up, using the rote work to help organize his thoughts, putting everything into categories of what he knew and what he wanted to know.

He knew:

> _Item:_ the girl was new to Eerie, was working on something, and had been focused on the street outside right when the man with the gray hair arrived.
> 
> _Item:_ the man with the gray hair had symbols on the back of his hands that might be the same as the ones Old Ned at the Eerie Immersive Theatre Experience had.

He wanted to know:

> Was the girl expecting the gray haired man? And if she was, why were they sitting across the shop from each other?
> 
> Was the gray haired man a relative of Old Ned’s? If he was, why was he so surprised by Eerie?
> 
> What did the symbols on his hands mean?

Some of these were questions Simon could probably get the answers to if he asked the right people in the right way. He was fairly certain he’d never know what the symbols meant – Old Ned had never told anyone and it was unlikely the gray haired man would trust a relative stranger with the information. It would be easy enough to find out if the man knew Old Ned. Simon would have to find a way to drop the name the next time they interacted. Assuming the man wasn’t just passing through.

As for the girl… Simon wanted to interrogate her, wanted to ask so many questions about what she was writing and what she knew, but he didn’t want to spook her if she did know something or come across as too weird if she didn’t. Better weird than dead was all well and good as long as you weren’t driving customers away.

“Simon!” Marshall’s voice cut through Simon’s thoughts and he turned from the sink, raising an eyebrow. “I’ve been calling you for five minutes. Are you okay?” Marshall asked, brow furrowed in concern.

Simon forced a smile. “I’m fine, Mars. Just thinking. Is something wrong?”

“That guy left,” Mars said and Simon bit back a curse, certain he’d missed his chance to learn something about what was going on. “He left this with his tip.” Mars held out a slip of paper. On it was written _The Mill. 8pm. Tonight._

Simon tried not to grin, but he was glad he’d have another shot at talking to the gray haired man. “Are we going?” Simon asked, though he would even if Marshall didn’t.

Which he would.

“Of course we are,” Marshall said, proving Simon right. “I don’t trust him and I want to know what he’s up to.”

Simon nodded, though he wasn’t sure he could say yet whether he trusted the man or not. “Is the girl still here?” he asked after a moment, figuring if she wasn’t he could do some more cleaning up front.

Marshall cocked his head in confusion. “What girl?” he asked.

“The girl by the windows? With the typewriter?”

Marshall shook his head and Simon stared at him for a moment before pushing through to the front of the shop. The girl was still there, sitting by the windows, typing away, the pile of papers even taller now than it had been when Simon went in the back. “See?” he asked, gesturing.

Marshall let his gaze travel over the whole dining room, then shook his head. “Simon, there’s no one here,” he said.

Simon stared at the girl, willing her to look up, but aside from a playful smile tugging at her lips, she didn’t show any sign that she noticed their conversation.

–

The Mill, also known as Hitchcock’s Mill, was a pub in downtown Eerie. The walls inside were full of pictures and information plaques about the history of Eerie’s oldest mill, the Hitchcock Mill, which had burned down under mysterious circumstances years ago and was said to have been haunted by a bank robber named Grungy Bill. Bill supposedly haunted the pub now, living in their toaster and occasionally coming out to spook the patrons, but Simon had never actually seen him.

It wasn’t that Simon didn’t believe in ghosts, he’d dealt with a few in the past, but he had a healthy respect for tangible proof.

When he and Marshall arrived, the pub was packed. Simon followed Marshall through the crowd, both of them searching for a familiar head of gray hair. Marshall spotted him first, in a back booth annoying the servers by taking up an entire table himself. When Marshall and Simon joined him, the server for that section seemed to relax a little.

Marshall did not relax. If anything, he seemed to tense up more. Simon wanted to reassure him that everything was fine, but he wasn’t sure of that himself.

“No hell-hound?” the man asked, sipping at a pint of beer.

Simon shook his head. “Sparky isn’t a service animal.” He made a mental note to look into Eerie’s service animal laws. Sparky wouldn’t make a good one, but there were a few mythical creatures Simon could think of that might, and it was good information to have for the future.

“What did you want?” Marshall asked, glaring across the table at the man.

The man took another sip of his beer, taking his sweet time enjoying the flavor and relishing how angry it made Marshall. “I want you to tell me where I am,” he said. “And why it’s like...this.” He gestured at a framed wanted poster on the wall, asking for any information on the rebel Fifi, a French poodle who was found to be plotting an uprising of dogs. Her associate Fluffy had been found and detained, but Fifi had gotten away.

“It’s Eerie,” Marshall said, as if that explained everything. And in a way it did. When strange things happened in Eerie, the people who lived there knew it was just something to expect. But Simon was pretty sure that wasn’t what the man was asking.

“Why don’t we start over?” Simon said before this could deteriorate. “I’m Simon and this is Marshall. And you are?”

The man’s expression clouded and he took a swig of beer, then slammed his stein down on the table and grumbled out, “I don’t have one, but I’m going by Dash X.”

“How do you not have a name?” Marshall asked.

“Because I woke up in the alley out back with no idea who I was or where I came from, that’s why. Got a problem with that?” Dash’s glare fixed on Marshall and Simon prayed silently that Marshall did not have a problem with that because he wasn’t in the mood for a bar fight. Luckily Marshall actually seemed to get the hint and didn’t say anything else on the topic. Dash turned his gaze on Simon. “So why is this place the way it is?” he asked. “Why’s it so fucking weird?”

“No one knows,” Simon said with a shrug. “It’s just always been this way. Weird is just a fact of life here.” He glanced at Marshall, then met Dash’s gaze again. “We research a little on the side, help people when they have hauntings and stuff like that. But Eerie’s just...Eerie.”

“Damn it.” Dash sat back in the booth and crossed his arms over his chest. “I thought you two would actually be able to help.” 

Simon glanced at Marshall again and saw his friend was staring at Dash’s hands.

This was not good.

“You should talk to Old Ned,” Simon said before Marshall could speak. He didn’t want this to turn into an interrogation, not right now, not knowing what little they did about Dash. “He runs the Immersive Theatre Experience a few blocks over. We can take you there, if you want?”

“And why should I talk to Old Ned?”

“Because,” Marshall said as Simon was trying to formulate the best half-truth he could come up with, “he has those symbols on his hands, too.”

–

Old Ned was in the ticket booth when Simon, Marshall, and Dash arrived at the theatre. He looked from one to the next, and froze when his gaze landed on Dash.

“You’re early,” he said.

“Early for what?” Dash demanded, pushing past Simon and Marshall to glare up at Ned. “Do you know who I am?”

Ned raised an eyebrow. “Young man, I have never seen you before in my life. I was merely noting that the you are early for the show.”

Dash shook his head. “Bullshit. You know something.” He held his hands up, the backs towards Ned, but the old man showed no hint of recognition.

“I know that we are offering two fully immersive experiences this evening and you are early for both of them. If you would like to buy a ticket to The Corn Things From Beyond Space or She Crawled Up From Her Grave, please do so otherwise you are wasting my time.”

“Ned,” Simon said, gently nudging Dash aside and stepping up to the window. “Dash is new here and he just has some questions we hoped you could answer.”

Ned looked down his nose at Simon, eyebrows raised in disbelief. “Some questions should not be asked, Mr. Holmes, you of all people should know that.”

Simon sighed. He turned away from the ticket window and met Dash’s gaze. The other man looked ready to break through the glass and throttle Ned until he got his answers, a course of action Simon knew would get Dash nothing. Except maybe a trip in Officer Knight’s squad car and a night in the Eerie Jail.

“We should go,” Simon said, laying a steadying hand on Dash’s arm. “Unless you want to watch one of the movies?”

Dash scowled and pulled away. “Whatever,” he said. “I’m going home.” He stormed off into the darkening night.

“Home?” Marshall asked as they watched Dash disappear. “Where’s _home_?”

Simon hated to think it, but there was only one answer that made sense. “Probably the alley behind the Mill,” he said. He sighed and glanced at Ned. “You really can’t tell us anything?” he asked.

Ned shook his head. “This is his journey,” he said. “Even if I knew anything, I wouldn’t tell you.”

“Thanks anyway.”

Ned gave a nod and turned his attention to a couple coming up to buy tickets as Simon and Marshall headed back down the sidewalk.

Simon shoved his hands in his pockets, scuffing his toes against the pavement. “I wish we could have helped him,” he said.

Marshall shook his head and bumped shoulders with Simon. “We tried,” he said. “That counts for something, doesn’t it.”

Simon nodded. Then, after a moment, he stopped and looked back over his shoulder. “I’m going to go see if he’s okay.”

“Want me to come with you?”

“No, I’ll be fine. I’ll just check on him and then head home.” The lie slipped easily off Simon’s lips and he held his expression even until Marshall had said his goodbyes and walked away, then he let out a slow sigh of relief.

He was going to check on Dash, but he wasn’t going to go home after. He was going back to the coffee shop, because as far as he knew that girl was still there.

–

“Are you going to figure out what that girl was up to?” Dash asked when Simon appeared at the mouth of the alley.

“You saw her, too?”

Dash nodded. “Couldn’t miss her. Why?”

“Marshall could.”

Dash snorted. “Somehow that doesn’t surprise me.” He stood up. “I’ll come, too. Maybe she knows something.”

Simon doubted it, but he wasn’t going to say no to a little back up. He hadn’t wanted to bring the topic of the girl up with Marshall again, didn’t want his sanity in question or to open a new weirdness investigation. One a night was enough. And while he didn’t know Dash very well, it was good to have someone along who knew what he was talking about.

They walked in an oppressive, uncomfortable silence. Simon had no idea what to say and he dreaded Dash asking more questions he didn’t have answers for. He wished there was more he could do to help, and he worried Dash held it against them that they had basically learned nothing despite their efforts.

He was relieved when they reached the shop.

It was dark, all locked up for the night. Simon led the way around to the back of the shop and let them into the kitchen. He turned on the lights and led the way through to the front of the shop, flicking on only the lights behind the counter so none of the neighboring shops would wonder what was up. They stood side by side at the counter, surveying the dining room. The booth the girl had been in was empty save for a book lying on the table. Simon glanced at Dash, then moved around the counter and walked briskly over to the table. The cover of the book read _Trusted Associates Coffee_. Simon opened it to the first page and read: _Simon kept an eye on the girl at the corner booth as he cleaned a table across the shop._

“What?” Simon whispered. He flipped through a few more pages, reading an account of the things that had happened that day. And the book went beyond that, detailing things that hadn’t happened yet. He flipped back to the title page, but there was no author listed.

“What is it?” Dash asked, coming up beside Simon.

“Something weird,” Simon said. He picked the book up and tucked it under his arm, pulling his cell phone out and dialing Marshall as he led Dash back out of the shop.

It looked like they’d have a second case tonight after all.


End file.
